the.com/mushroom cloud
physics doodling a fungus the size of regret in the sky
means The towering, mushroom-shaped column of smoke, debris, and condensed vapor that rises after a very large explosion, most infamously a nuclear detonation.
from A plain compound: "mushroom," the cap-and-stalk fungus (from Old French "mousseron," possibly tied to "mousse," moss), wedded to "cloud." The shape-comparison long predates the bomb — observers described volcanic and large blast clouds as mushroom-like in the 1800s — but the phrase fused permanently into the language after 1945, when the Trinity test and Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave the world an image it would never unsee.
- why mushroom
- hot gas rises, cools, curls back into a cap
- first witness
- Trinity test lit New Mexico like a second sun
- the stem
- updraft sucks dust and debris skyward for miles
- not exclusive
- big volcanoes and meteor strikes make them too
- color tell
- reddish from nitrogen oxides cooking in the heat
hiroshima bombing — august 6, 1945: atomic bomb created iconic mushroom cloud over japan, killing ~70,000 people instantly
bikini atoll test — operation crossroads, july 1946: us nuclear test created massive mushroom cloud visible 40 miles away
tsar bomba detonation — october 30, 1961: soviet union's largest nuclear weapon test, mushroom cloud reached 64km altitude over arctic